


The Price

by purpleseas



Series: Summerland Trilogy [1]
Category: Lost
Genre: Angst, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Non-Explicit Sex, Pining, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-25
Updated: 2013-07-25
Packaged: 2017-12-21 07:14:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpleseas/pseuds/purpleseas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>During his exile from the Island, Ben spends the evening with a prostitute and reflects on two people he couldn't have.</p><p>From my original LiveJournal post, the song for this story is "Plainsong" by The Cure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price

He freezes every time, against the foreign feel of gentle hands and the invasion of a space no one else cares to enter. It doesn’t matter how much he wants it or how long it’s been. His body forgets and prepares to be hurt. He wishes he could explain this beforehand or engage the same one more than once, so they wouldn’t stop and ask questions, but that would only lead to other questions. Her hand slips from his cheek to his shoulder. He misses the warmth instantly.

“Am I going too fast?”

“No,” he says. “It’s not a reflection on you. I’ve had a long day, that’s all.”

“I could get you a drink.”

He smiles faintly. He had a few before she arrived, toeing the fine line between making this transaction a little smoother and rendering it completely impossible. “No, I’ll be fine. Please, don’t stop.” 

There’s a second’s concern in her dark, almond-shaped eyes, an awareness that something in him is broken and bleeding. He knows his mask tends to slip on nights like this. They usually don’t notice, or they have the courtesy to pretend not to. Even as he wishes the service had sent someone cold and oblivious, he can’t help but be titillated by these small moments of compassion, manufactured though they must be. He wonders what it would be like to take that next drink, then another and another, until he’s happily spilling what should have stayed secret. Dad enjoyed that well enough. He shoves the memories away and wills himself to thaw.

She moves forward to kiss his neck and suck at his earlobe. He gets goosebumps. Her perfume is complicated and almost too heavy. He can make out some vanilla, some spice and a great deal of citrus. It reminds him of the fruits back home, so sweet they could have been made of spun sugar, or so sour they caved his cheeks in. His mouth isn’t so dry anymore. He moves it toward hers. She kisses around it, tasting and teasing. Her tongue finds the tiny scar just under his bottom lip and traces it. 

The heat and softness collide with his memory of the way it ached and bled in the armory, of the twisted face of the man who delivered the blows. Of the bright green eyes of another captor. He can’t be sure where old pain ends and new pleasure begins, but they melt together so seamlessly as to make him gasp. He clutches her face and kisses her hard and deep. His body begins to cooperate, finally going stiff in the right place. He releases her, and she leads him from the chair to the bed.

These nights are few and far between. He likes to pretend he can stay sated for months or years at a time, even when he doesn’t have to. Sometimes he gets it over with in two minutes and resents himself for wanting it at all. Sometimes he tries to make it last all night, desperate for something to take him out of himself and leave him anesthetized for hours after. At best, it’s somewhere in between, closer to the former than the latter. Tonight, the need is sharp and barely controllable. He feels like a bomb wrapped in heinously expensive fabrics, and knows it’s going to be a struggle. He tries to keep his mind occupied, so that his body can’t run away with it too soon.

He lays her down and kisses her, catching her hands when they wander too low. She’s responsive enough, and he wonders how far this is from real desire and passion. Some are better actresses than others, but not good enough to make him forget why they’re here. She says something inane in his ear, and the timbre of her voice freezes him all over again. It’s deeper and breathier than it was in the chair. It’s Juliet’s. He suppresses a sigh and rolls onto his back, considering a cancellation. His body shrieks curses and threats at him, and he often imagines it would murder his brain if it could. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, “but if you wouldn’t mind…”

“Not talking?”

“Yes. I should have mentioned it before.”

“That’s okay. Do you want me to—”

“I just need a moment.”

He stopped asking for blondes ages ago, but it hadn’t occurred to him to worry about voices. He scrambles to reassure himself. The woman is beautiful in an ostentatious, expensive way. He can’t imagine her in wash-and-wear cotton clothes and hiking boots, or even without makeup. She towered over him when she entered the room, but there isn’t much substance to her. He could circle her wrist with one finger. The thought of her subduing anyone without a weapon almost makes him laugh. She’s nothing like Juliet. Not like any of _his_ women. Even as he thinks it, the phrase rings false. No matter how hard he tried to hold on, they all left in the end. They never belonged to him, her least of all. 

His brain decides to mock his body by dwelling on that madness. He sighs at his own perversity and lets it happen. If nothing else, it will prolong things. It’s not Juliet’s voice that dominates his memories of her, not even when it rose in rage at him or when he made it say filthy things in his fantasies. It’s her silence. In her captive sorrow, in her sullen obedience and slow betrayal, always that silence, that stillness. They gave her secrets to hide and a mask to wear, but she made them her own. He recognized the hardness in her, the will to go on no matter what she had to do, as his own. It seemed impossible that she wouldn’t see herself, too, through the cold façade that kept the others intimidated and obedient. He courted her with feeble gestures, always terrified that one of them might work and he’d find himself out of his depth, with nothing to offer her but senseless, fumbling worship. He never knew exactly what he wanted from her, apart from the obvious. He only _wanted._ A dim and stubborn hope kept him going, that she’d see the longing in him and surrender to it, that she’d let herself be a treasured possession. 

He gave little gifts and stole touches when he could. He asked her for a dinner date without actually asking, and made a giddy fool of himself all evening. She only stared, her eyes a perfect, practiced, impenetrable blank. He could have her anger and her tears, but nothing else. It ended for him on a grassy hill, under a brilliant blue sky, with the insistent reek of Goodwin’s corpse in his nostrils. She claimed ignorance. He lost himself and said too much. As soon as the declaration of ownership left his mouth, he knew it wasn’t true, and never would be. He walked home alone, feeling as empty and fragile as if his insides had been replaced by a ball of blown glass. The final betrayal came soon enough, and the fact of it wasn’t surprising. It was the simplicity, the cleanliness of the break, at least for her. He was the one left tied and battered and bleeding all over himself. He let her seep out of him that way, and promised himself no one else would get inside again. Not even the one who would have given anything to be where the secrets were. 

He glances at the woman next to him, who is placidly staring at the ceiling. He could have paid for the whole night, if only to bolster his fantasies of pornographic stamina, but that would mean tacitly admitting he needed the company. She must have other things to do. She probably didn’t spend her recent girlhood dreaming of servicing middle-aged men in hotel rooms. 

“I’m sorry this is taking so long,” he says. She turns onto her side and props her head up on her hand, one brow raised.

“It isn’t,” she says. “I’ve only been here twenty minutes.”

“Oh.”

“You weren't kidding about today.”

“I guess not.”

She touches his face again. “It’ll be okay. Tomorrow’s a new day, right?”

He wonders how insane she’d think he was if he told her about the frozen wheel and the things that can go wrong with it. “Right.” 

She kisses him. He pulls her close and closes his eyes, ready again. She’s quite clever to pretend she cares and offer a cliché reassurance that somehow makes this feel more comfortably ordinary. He always overpays, but now, he finds himself making a mental note to give her a little extra as well. He knows what it is to serve the needs of others while swallowing one’s own. That was duty, and most of the time, it was enough. There were wonders he couldn’t have described, even to himself, and the fierce desire to protect them. There was a beautiful baby girl to mold into someone as hard and resourceful as himself, so no one could ever hurt her without suffering for it. It was easy to pretend he had no blood in his veins and no needs fatherhood or leadership couldn’t satisfy. His people liked to obey what they couldn’t understand. He still burned inside.

There were days when it seemed ridiculous to want anything from another person, as disappointing and demanding as they were, and there were nights when he wanted nothing more than to be touched and held. He’d sneak outside in the small hours to cool his hands in wet grasses and stare up at the stars. Questions would begin to rise from the depths of his mind, bringing buried resentments with them, but he’d push them back down without a moment’s hesitation. Without Jacob, he’d be nothing. He had no business questioning the agenda, or the will behind it. It felt too much like the few times he’d dared to express surprise or curiosity about one of Dad’s better days. Whatever mercy he’d been granted would turn back into cruelty. He’d been trained well. It all fell apart anyway, shot to sunshine by the arrival they’d been waiting for.

He doesn’t realize how passionate he’s become until he feels the woman pulling back to unbutton his shirt. He lets her open it slightly, then breaks the kiss. “Leave that, please,” he says. 

She nods, probably thinking he’s ashamed of what’s under there. He can’t say he’s particularly proud, but what he wants is the feel of long treks under the tropical sun, his shirt damp with sweat and sticking to his back, the feel of purpose and progress. Every city feels cold, and all the hot work, the dirty work, is done by his assassin. He stays clean in his newly posh and tailored wardrobe. Sometimes he misses dressing like a suburban father. It was a brilliant disguise. 

She slowly takes off her clothes. Some of these women have questionable surgical enhancements, or scars that lead him to guilty speculation on the horrors that may have led them down this path. Her skin is flawless. He tries to look more enticed than he is. At some point, he didn’t have to embellish. It took tremendous effort not to make a mess of himself when the first one stripped for him and asked him what he wanted. _Teach me_ , he’d said, his voice weak with the kind of fear he hadn’t felt since the Purge, and she had, courteously and patiently enough, but without desire. Now he’s the courteous and patient one, waiting for the show to be over so he can close his eyes again. He could hire any number of women for the night, or men, with the same effect. These days, there’s little appeal in unlined faces, in bodies that have barely been lived in, never subject to years of privation in a wheelchair or touched by a divine hand. 

It was easy as ever in the beginning, to lie and manipulate, to play the part he’d so thoroughly rehearsed, dressed in that ludicrous tourist costume. He suffered their hospitality with as much cowering and whimpering as he could manage, filing away some useful information about their torturer. John asked him for help one day. Ben remembers that broad-shouldered body under his hands, immobilized for the moment but losing the softness of disuse, becoming something solid and new in the place where it was always meant to be. He remembers the smell of rain and sweat and blood on John’s skin. He remembers the light that came on inside him when John stumbled and leaned against him, when he apologized for moving John’s mangled leg. He told himself it was only awe at what the Island had done for John, or a remnant of the way things used to be with Alex. A nostalgia for simpler days, when the outside world stayed out and all he had to do was take care of her. That didn’t explain the way his heart swelled from nothing more than John’s simple gratitude and casual pat on the arm. Puzzled, he stored the recollection away in a little box in his mind and resisted the urge to peek at it. Mostly. 

John sought him out soon enough. They sliced and diced each other with words, and Ben found himself terribly excited to hear his own language spoken back to him. It wasn’t just the amateur version of his own deflections and stinging jibes, it was his unwavering, sacrificial devotion to that place, the awe he felt at its power, the fear of losing its protection. It didn’t matter that John didn’t know what he was talking about half the time. He had the vocabulary, and was beginning to learn the poetry. He passed the tests and weathered the jealousy that had killed lesser men. He took everything Ben could think to throw at him and kept coming back for more, the only one strong enough to pursue Ben without violence. It didn’t matter that all he wanted were answers to this riddle or that. John was a deeper mirror than Juliet, one that reflected his weakness and his pain, one that showed him what he could have been if he’d been permitted to keep his innocence a bit longer. Sometimes, he felt sure John knew this, without benefit of files or honesty. It came across in his unprovoked smiles, and in all those long looks Ben didn’t care to break from. Under everything else was the terror of being seen through his mask, of almost being known. 

The woman moves down and takes him into her mouth. He begins to tremble, and wishes pleasure didn’t hit him the same way rage and fear do. No one but John noticed the trembling, but other things slipped past him. Ben remembers some exasperating conversation from long ago, when the two of them were still grappling for control of something uncontrollable, a power that would devour them both without hesitation. It began to rain. John’s voice trailed off and he turned his face up toward the sky, smiling. Nothing seemed to matter to him but that moment, that water falling on his face, and he embraced it with a child’s joy. After his shambles of a life, he had no right to that kind of purity. Ben wanted to cut him open and pluck it out at its source, to take it apart and learn the secret of it. John caught him watching, and his smile only grew, dazzling in its rumpled, guileless way. The familiar stab of jealousy grew hotter with something else, a deep longing to give instead of just taking, to ravage this man without violence and be consumed in return. _I guess it doesn’t faze you anymore_ , John said, _but it gets me every time. You’ll get used to it_ , Ben replied, hoping that wasn’t true. He kept his eyes on the ground for the rest of the trip, feeling like a wet rat. 

In the end, he had nothing to offer John but an apology, leaving him to the whims of destiny and the vagaries of Jacob’s will. He couldn’t imagine that inexplicably soft heart surviving it all intact, or that wild spirit struggling against ownership for much longer. He only hoped he wouldn’t be called on to end it all someday. John was haunting him already, in thoughts and later in dreams. The pleasant ones were so hard to come by. He didn’t need them turning as bloody as the others. They were already sticky enough.

He knows he isn’t going to last much longer, and awkwardly pats the woman’s shoulder. She sits up and puts the condom on him. He gets on top of her, afraid for a moment that it might be over before he’s even inside. As good as it feels, he knows he’s missing something. There’s no connection to be deepened here, no intimate knowledge of someone who truly knows him but still chooses him freely. There’s no joy, and no way of asking for a reprieve. Everything was decided for him the day he was born. It doesn’t matter what he feels or what he wants. It never has.

His body finally wrestles control away from his mind and begins to wrap it in fog. This is the only surrender he can allow himself. He’s dimly aware that he’s saying something, but his ears feel full of cotton. A surge of fear tightens his chest, an animal awareness that he may be putting himself in danger. He sees John’s eyes, in the moments they went soft with sympathy, with a plea to let go and give it all over to him. With the mercy no one else ever offered. Ben lets go. His mind goes silent as he falls.

He’s melting under the sun, still trembling in spite of it. Her arms surround him, and she presses his head to her chest. There’s peace here, incomplete but enough for now. He imagines he knew it in full only once, cradled against his dying mother’s breast. He always tries to stay in this moment, but it’s over the fastest. She can’t stay. 

He pulls the duvet over himself and watches her gather her clothes, his blinks getting longer and longer. “Thank you,” he says softly. She looks back at him. 

“You’re welcome. I had a good time.”

He looks away, not wanting to see the lie that isn’t coming through in her voice. She slips off to the bathroom, and he’s conscious of very little until she returns. 

He hands her another stack of hundreds and asks her the same questions he asks them all. “Did I say any names?”

“Not that I heard.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“I wasn’t babbling at the end?”

She smiles. “I wouldn’t call it babbling. Noises, yes, but not words.”

He knows it’s pointless to ask. Even if she did hear something beyond a name, she wouldn’t know what it meant. John would say Ben wanted it to happen. If he spilled all his secrets, he’d be free, at least until they tracked him down and put him out of his misery. He smiles and shakes his head.

“It happens like that sometimes,” she says. “We get so focused on one thing that the rest of it goes haywire.”

He swallows. “I suppose so.”

She takes his hand and squeezes. He lifts her hand to his mouth and kisses it. That concern is back in her eyes, and he’s impressed by her dedication. She opens her mouth to speak. He cuts her off. 

“I’m fine now,” he says. “Never better. You’re very kind.”

She smiles and kisses his cheek, then tells him to ask for her anytime. He nods, not intending to do any such thing. She leaves. He glances at himself in the bathroom mirror as he’s washing up. All pink and shiny, like new again. He laughs at that thought, knowing it could never be so simple. He gets into bed and closes his eyes. 

Another face rises up in his mind now. She’s still not much more than a girl, with wet eyes and a trembling mouth. The gunman behind her isn’t a man anymore, but an ugly smear of red and black. Killing him wasn’t enough. There’s still a price to be paid, and he knows it might be the ultimate one. She begs Daddy to save her. He promises he will, and lulls himself to sleep by concocting new plans, veering off into absurdity and impossibility by number twelve or so. It’s still better than the one he had at that moment. Anything is better.

He dreads another dream of empty eyes and blood in black curls, but it doesn’t materialize. John comes to take him home. The danger has passed. Nothing is lurking in the wild to judge them or offer miracles for blood. They don’t have to be special anymore. They go walking in the jungle until their clothes are wet with sweat and nothing has been left unsaid. John reaches for him. As surprised as he always is, Ben doesn’t turn away. He takes what’s offered, without reservation, and finds he has plenty to give in return. The war is over, and there’s still something left for him. That’s how he knows he’s dreaming.


End file.
